Shelley Jackson’s “Skin” is a story published on the skin of 2095 volunteers

Shelley Jackson's story "Skin" exists only in the flesh -- the flesh of about 2,000 volunteers. In 2003, when she wrote the story, she called for participants to each be tattooed with a single word (some also get a bit of punctuation, like "ankles," with the comma included). The story has never been published in any other form.

If someone wanted to try to piece the story together, it could never be fully assembled. One of Jackson's participants fell ill and died a few years ago -- making "Skin" both physical and ephemeral, something that is simultaneously more tangible and less real than a story printed on paper.